Happy Birthday Auntie!

Auntie came up after work on her birthday to help us celebrate Jaydon's birthday party the next day.  We decided we had to do a little something special so we enjoyed some strawberry shortcake after a nice dinner.  Happy Birthday Jen!

Happy 3rd Birthday Jaydon!

Jaydon turns 3!

 

Jaydon is a total talker! It is funny going from his 2 year birthday when he hardly spoke at all and only signed and the Dr. was telling us that he might need to be checked for speech stuff if he didn't pick up his talking fairly soon, well as I figured around 2.25 he took off talking and hasn't looked back. He has a great vocabulary, talks in great sentences and many people can understand him quite well.  He continues to be an active guy who likes to play outside and run around inside wrestling, tackling and racing around.  Some new favorite things are playing games.  Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders have been great and he has practically worn them both out.  Luckily he got a few more games for his 3rd birthday so we can continue to expand our horizons.  He eats well and sleeps well, though he did give up his nap a couple months before turning 3.  He is an amazing little boy who has just become more and more fun as he grows older. 

 

We had a fun day celebrating Jaydon, he got a special breakfast with muffins and he even got to watch some Sesame Street (his favorite show, especially the Journey to Ernie segments!). We then opened a gift and dad did have to go to work. The nice thing was he met us for a Red Robin lunch and then we had a wonderful salmon dinner sent down fresh from AK.

 

Breakfast excitement

Opening his first gift

How many people had a Dr. set like that when they were kids?  I know I did and loved it.

Practicing being a Dr.

Fabulous salmon dinner, thanks Granny and Papa for sending us some great fish!

Special fruit and whip cream dessert

 Opening a last gift of the day - he has really enjoyed having this game.

Singing!

Lucy is 5 months

You think time flies with your first child and then you have a second and it is crazy, I can't believe Lucy is 5 months old.  We didn't get a weight update right around her 5 month mark but a week and a half later she was 15lb 11oz so that was a good weight gain in a little over a month.  Yeah!

 

Did I mention Lucy loves to move?  She went from rolling every direction to deciding that scooting on her tummy wherever she wanted was much easier.  She has been almost as mobile as a full on crawler and it is pretty insane.  She just started trying to get up on hands and knees but mostly she is content to be on her tummy and army crawl around.  It is awesome and scary all at the same time.  I still have lots of 3 year old toys all over the house that I hadn't quite planned on needing to hide and baby proof right away.  She is a content baby who loves to investigate and play with toys.  She will spend time intently lookng at and trying to eat whatever toy she happens to come across.  Her favorites this month were Mortimer the Moose, the fabric squre with crinkly stuff inside and her exersaucer.

 

As for her health issues she is doing better and really is quite a happy healthy girl.  She has a neck rash that has some major flare ups (she has just started itching at it) and it never really goes away.  We think it is some kind of reaction to a food but we just can't figure out what food it is.  I am currently off dairy, soy, wheat, eggs, peas, beans, chickpeas, lentils and corn.  It is quite tedious to find stuff I can eat and has definitely been the biggest challenge with Lucy.  Her intolerances don't appear to be diminishing and at times it even seems she is just even more sensitive to tons of stuff.  Hopefully once we hit the six month mark it will gradually start improving.  Her spit up also goes through phases where it is ok and then at times it gets quite bad again. 

 

She is still digging her solids!  She would eat this stuff all the time, I am looking forward to when it gets a bit less messy.

Here she is working on that crawling!

Oh holy updates!

We have been so busy this summer, it has been fabulous but full and we are definitely ready to settle down and enjoy some home time.  Unfortunately, Jeremy will continue to have to travel three times a month to AK but at least the kids and I will be home for awhile now.  I think in Lucy's first five months of life we have spent 30 nights away from home and it has been fun but hectic.  Jaydon will be turning 3 soon, he starts preschool in less than 2 weeks and life just continues to fly by.  Lucy is moving around so much it is crazy, you can't leave that girl in one spot, I think she is just anxious to keep up with her big brother.  

I have been neglectful in updating the blog but here it comes.  In the next few days I will probably have 15-20 new updates so feel free to keep checking back and scrolling through the posts to make sure you don't miss something.  We are happy you can keep up with all our adventures online.

North Carolina Family Reunion

We finally made it to the East Coast as a family to hang out with my grandmas sisters family!  It was such a wonderful vacation and we already are planning to try making it an every couple year thing.  We all stayed at my second cousin Sally's house right on a lake in NC.  It was glorious, in our area we don't get to just walk outside and jump into 80+ degree lake water. I am so thankful that we finally got this reunion on the calendar  made it happen.

One of the first things Jaydon found was the drum, he had a great time and if you weren't sure where he was you didn't have to wait long to hear the drumming start.

A little lizard liked to sun himself on the patio furniture.

Jaydon loved throwing the ball for Charlie, Charlie in turn loved having Jaydon visit and getting lots of ball throwing time.

Grandma and Jaydon

Cousin Michael and Great Aunt Carol

Lucy getting into the vacation spirit by napping on the hammock.

Cousin Sally found her old Candy Land game, Jaydon was in heaven.  Dad and Jaydon playing with Cousin Jessica.

The back porch full of rocking chairs overlooking the lake = AWESOME!  From near to far, Cousin Sally, Cousin Jay, Grandma with Lucy, Great Uncle Bill, Great Aunt Carol, Aunt Mary

The view from the back porch

Everyone getting into the Candy Land action with Jaydon

Dad, Lucy and Jaydon playing piano

Great Aunt Carol and Great Uncle Bill with the kids

Lucy loved Cousin Sally

Lucy going for a swim with Dad

First touch

No thank you, she was not a big fan of the open water.  She loves baths but not lakes evidently, I bet that will change in the next couple years.

All the family just floating or swimming and hanging out in the amazingly warm lake.

Mom and Lucy

Lucy loved having Cousin Michael play the ukulele to her while snuggling with Cousin Jessica

 

Bummer...I had another video but after failing to load 15 times I am giving up, it was Jaydon jumping in the water for the first time off the dock, pretty fun!

 

  

Swimming time: Jaydon with Aunt Mary and Lucy in the water.

Misc. Summer Pics

Summer has been great and so busy.  I had a whole bunch of somewhat random pictures so I decided to do a random post!  These tend to be the low key hanging at home photos from our past couple months.

Jaydon enjoyed playing out on our back deck, he also enjoys being naked!  We are definitely starting to make progress on potty training so hopefully soon we can say that job is complete!

Jaydon reading a story That Bad, Bad Cat  to Brenna

 Lucy sucks her thumb, Jaydon likes to pretend he is a 'baby' sometimes too.  We also had to order Lucy a Violet (the purple dog) to match Jaydon's Scout so they both have nighttime music.

Dad found a cool dragon fly on the way out for work one morning, he and Jaydon both got to hold it.

Jaydon must try out everything for Lucy.  Here he is in the jumper.

Lucy eating more food!

Can you find Jaydon?

With Jaydon my mom hung a rope attached to his carseat when he was a baby to make a swing inside.  This time Lucy is able to be in the kid swing we got grandma for mother's day and hang from the pull up bar, she enjoyed it!

We had a couple hot days and our house gets very warm, especially the kids rooms.  One night when Jeremy was out of town I checked on Jaydon and this is how I found him.  He had taken off his shorts, moved down from the actual bed and fell asleep on his little rug right in front of the fan.

Practicing his 3, for his upcoming birthday!

Another track meet.  I messed up and deleted a few photos before we got them off the camera but he won two blue ribbons at this meet and had a great time with his daddy.



Bye Armand

This is my teddy bear from when I was a baby, he didn't have a name until Jeremy and I were dating and Jeremy decided on Armand Tamzarian (I guess that is from The Simpsons tv show).  Armand has a music box in his belly and he played Bram's Lullabuy for me to get to sleep to many many times as a child and even an adult.  I am happy to say he has also played his song for both of my children many times.  Unfortunately, Armand finally stopped working.  I was in with Lucy rocking and nursing her at bedtime and I heard the ping of something mechanical breaking inside.  I knew it was coming but it was still bitter sweet to say good-bye to my childhood bear.

Wedding Weekend

Jeremy's good friend Vitaliy got married at an Island in the San Juans and he was in the wedding so, we convinced my sister and brother-in-law to meet us up there with the big boat so we would have a home base for the adventure.  It was great, we got to spend time on the boat, Jeremy and I got to go to the wedding while they watched the kids and then I got to hang out on the boat with them in the evening giving Jeremy plenty of time to attend all the festivities.  Jaydon got to kayak, fish and in general just spend some time on a boat which he hasn't done a whole lot of.  I realized though that having one camera we got lots of great photos of the wedding but no other photos of our weekend stay on the boat, oh well, maybe next time. 

L and Jeremy on our quick ride from where the big boat was anchored to the wedding island.

Beautiful day and beautiful views!

So Vitaliy and Olga have a good friend whose dad owns his own island, it is crazy beautiful and amazing.  It made for a picture perfect site to get married.  This is a bad lighting photo of the main house.

A view from one part of the island

The guest house with the wedding arbor and chairs set up.

Jeremy escorting Narmeen down the aisle.

The wedding party waiting for the bride to make her appearance

Here comes the bride!  It was kind of sad that Olga's parents didn't get their visas approved for the wedding so a good friend escorted her instead but her parents were there via skype in the front row, ahhh technology.

Getting started

Who is that handsome man!

Russian tradition, the bride and groom break plates before entering their 'house' and whoever breaks theirs first is going to be in charge :)  Olga got it by a mile!

Another custom, being welcomed by Vitaliy's parents with bread and salt.

There were quite a few people there who knew how to pull strings or what strings to pull and they got this state ferry to honk as it went by the island for the couple.

A toast!

After the wedding on one island, the whole party headed over to another island for a dinner at Warren Miller's house, yes, the snowboard and skiing movie guy.  I didn't attend that part but Jeremy said it was quite impressive and that they have another identical house in MT.  Beautiful cake.

The pretty tables.

Laurie and Warren Miller's

Cake!

And dancing!  It was a wonderful event and it was fabulous to be able to have such a great place to stay in our own berths of a boat.